The Culinary Arts, Ferran Adrià, and Documenta 12 Jean A
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University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Master's Theses University of Connecticut Graduate School 4-28-2014 De Gustibus non est Disputadem: the Culinary Arts, Ferran Adrià, and Documenta 12 Jean A. Nihoul University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Recommended Citation Nihoul, Jean A., "De Gustibus non est Disputadem: the Culinary Arts, Ferran Adrià, and Documenta 12" (2014). Master's Theses. 554. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/gs_theses/554 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Connecticut Graduate School at OpenCommons@UConn. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of OpenCommons@UConn. For more information, please contact [email protected]. De Gustibus non est Disputadem: the Culinary Arts, Ferran Adrià, and Documenta 12 Jean A. Nihoul B.A., Franklin and Marshall College, 2009 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts At the University of Connecticut 2014 -i- APPROVAL PAGE Masters of Arts Thesis De Gustibus non est Disputadem: the Culinary Arts, Ferran Adrià, and Documenta 12 Presented by Jean A. Nihoul, B.A. Major Advisor___________________________________________________________ Dr. Anne D’Alleva Associate Advisor________________________________________________________ Dr. Lewis Gordon Associate Advisor________________________________________________________ Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon Associate Advisor________________________________________________________ Dr. Margo Machida University of Connecticut 2014 -ii- Acknowledgments This project would have been an impossible undertaking without the continuing support of my advisors. I would like to first thank Dr. Anne D’Alleva for her unrelenting guidance throughout this entire process, it has been indispensable in making this work the best it could possibly be. I also offer my gratitude to Dr. Lewis Gordon, whose feedback, advice, and encouragement, have given me the confidence to continue my studies and delve deeper into this field of research. I also extend my sincerest thanks to Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon, who has revealed the truly inter-disciplinary nature of Food Studies by having shown me the numerous ways this subject can be approached. I would also like to thank the other faculty members of the Art and Art History Department; particularly Dr. Margo Machida, whose support and guidance kept me level-headed and helped make this work possible. I also owe an immense gratitude to Dr. Kelly Dennis, whose advice and feedback was instrumental in developing this topic. Alex Hill was also invaluable, and I cannot thank him enough for his assistance. Of course, I would like to thank the elBulli staff who facilitated my research by providing me with great access to their website and helping me acquire the necessary information that was needed to put this together. I would also like to especially thank Ferran Adrià for the time he took to speak with me while at Harvard, which truly gave me a better understanding into what he does. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends, particularly my father whose constant feedback helped me articulate my ideas and make this work as good as it could be. And of course, to the second year MA and MFAs, whose understanding and support made this experience endurable. -iii- Table of Contents Approval Page ii Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents iv Introduction 1 Chapter I 17 Digesting Otherness Chapter II 34 Genius, Taste, and Objective Pleasure in Culinary Deconstruction Chapter III 59 The Man of Taste Conclusion 90 Appendix I 104 Excerpt from Documenta 12 Kassel, 16/06-23/09, 2007, Catalog Appendix II 105 Transcript of interview between Jean Nihoul and Ferran Adrià Bibliography 110 Referenced Materials 120 Illustrations 125 -iv- INTRODUCTION When the New York Times first published an article about El Bulli, they compared me to Dalí. That was really flattering… But I’m a cook, and I’m well aware of my limitations. I admire the work of artists but I don’t aspire to practice their art. Whether cuisine is an art form or not doesn’t interest me. What I find fascinating is the dialogue between both disciplines: my dishes, for instance, have nothing to do with art. But, like an artist, I seek to move people through them. Above anything else, I’ve always wanted to make people happy with my work, and I think at El Bulli we succeeded in doing that. Food has an incredible power to create happiness.1 —Ferran Adrià The old Latin idiom, de gustibus non est disputadem (in matters of taste, there can be no disputes) was put to the test during the quinquennial international art exhibition, Documenta 12, when chef Ferran Adrià was invited to participate as an artist in 2007.2 In the show, Adrià established his world famous restaurant, El Bulli,3 as Pavilion G, where his “ ‘artwork’ was a dinner every night […] for two people, selected at random during the 100-day run of the exhibition and sent off with airfares and a voucher” (see fig. 1 for Pavilion G’s sample menu).4 The chef is said to have succeeded in exploring “the ultimate borders of taste, to develop an 1 Marta Represa, “Ferran Adrià on El Bulli,” AnOther Magazine, July 22, 2013, accessed November 1, 2013, http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/2887/Ferran_Adrià_on_El_Bulli. 2 Throughout this thesis, I will capitalize “Taste” when referring to “aesthetic taste—[the] type of Taste signified in the expression of ‘philosophies of Taste’ or the ‘philosophical problem of taste’ ”; whereas the lowercase “taste” will refer to gustatory taste; and the lowercase and italicized “taste” will allude to both gustatory taste and aesthetic Taste. Regardless of how the term might appear in the original text I may be quoting; I will modify the word so as to consistently employ this rule throughout the paper. I am borrowing this concept (with the exception of “taste”) from Carolyn Korsmeyer’s Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 38. 3 It should be noted that, when the restaurant closed its doors in 2011, its name was spelled “elBulli,” yet it has only been spelled this way since 2000. “For most of its history, […] the place was called ‘El Bulli’; to call it ‘elBulli’ before 2000 would be anachronistic, and to switch back and forth between the two renderings according to the period in question would […] be confusing. Therefore, unless I’m referring to a book title of the official name of one of the restaurant’s post-2000 enterprises, I have used the form ‘El Bulli’ throughout” (Colman Andrews, Ferran: the Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man who Reinvented Food [New York, N.Y.: Gotham Books, 2010], xi). Given that Andrews is recognized to have written the most authoritative biography on Adrià, I will adopt his reasoning and refer to the restaurant as “El Bulli.” 4 Joanna Pitman, “Yum, Yum: Love the Mousse. But is it Art?” Spectator Magazine vol. 310, no. 9437 (July 11, 2009): 16, accessed December 28 2013, http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/3755658/yum-yum-love-the- mousse-but-is-it-art/. -1- experimental aesthetic that [took] the mouth, rather than the eye, as its point of departure.”5 Adrià and his cuisine turned out to be issues of much discussion and debate over the course of the exhibition for a variety of reasons, primarily stemming from the misconception that food cannot inspire the same type of critical thought as the fine arts can.6 What failed on a larger level, however, was Documenta’s inability to generate a proper dialogue that could unite both the visual and culinary arts.7 Ultimately, Adrià’s participation in the exhibition was appropriate and, eventually successful in encouraging scholars and art aficionados to broaden their understanding of what can acceptably be called a work of art. Having been referred to not only as an artist, but also as an “inventor, scientist, designer, philosopher and stage director,” Ferran Adrià was the executive chef and co-owner of the “world’s most creative restaurant,” the renowned El Bulli, located along the Spanish Mediterranean coast just outside of Barcelona in Cala Montjoi.8 Praised for its stellar food and excellent dining experience, a dinner at El Bulli “involve[d] all the senses, it engage[d] the mind, and [was] also, at times, a strangely emotional experience.”9 Despite the restaurant’s closure in 2011, to this day the Catalan chef is still considered one of the leading pioneers of the cuisine commonly referred to as molecular gastronomy, a style of avant-garde cooking known for its 5 Charlotte Birnbaum, “Alimentary School: Charlotte Birnbaum on Ferran Adrià and Futurist Cooking,” Artforum International vol. 48, no. 2 (October, 2009): 112. 6 For more on the controversy, see: John Carlin, “If the World’s Greatest Chef Cooked for a Living, he’d Starve,” Observer Food Monthly vol. 69 (December 17, 2006): 40-5, accessed October 22, 2013, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/futureoffood/story/0,,1969713,00.html; Jay McInerney, “It was Delicious while it Lasted,” Vanity Fair Magazine vol. 52, no. 10 (October, 2010): 170-5, accessed October 22, 2013, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/el-bulli-201010; Graham Keeley, “Is Food Art? El Bulli Chef Creates a Stir,” Independent, May 16, 2007, sec. Europe, p. 19; and Anton Vidokle, “Art without Artists?” e-flux vol. 16 (May, 2010): 1-9, accessed October 22, 2013, http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/article_136.pdf. 7 Alexandra Alisauskas, “Introduction,” Invisible Culture vol. 14 (Winter, 2010): 2, accessed October 31, 2013, http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_14/. 8 Adrian Searle, “Should I Eat it or Frame it?” Guardian, September 14, 2008, p. 4, accessed November 1, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/15/foodanddrink.restaurants.